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“The hard life began the day I retired, I have no flat, no job and no regular income” says the Chinese acrobat Cheng Fei, seven-times national champion and world champion. “The flowers, the applause, the flags – it feels like a different life“. On the scraphead by their mid-twenties, on their own, with no social security, often lacking formal education and job prospects in THE GHOSTS Constanza Macras worked with Chinese acrobats and circus performers. It looks like these artists, who once won fame and fortune for their country with their bodily discipline, have been forgotten and “decommissioned” by Chinese society, even though many of them are still quite young. They recall the “hungry ghosts” – according to Chinese popular mythology, lost souls who have been forgotten by their descendants and lead a miserable existence in an intermediate world. For Macras these artists’ materially precarious, ghostly condition is a metaphor for life in contemporary China, with its contradictions, social injustice and power structures. Those who once brought the country glory and honor are discarded as soon as they are no longer top achievers. “THE GHOSTS”, like the Chinese Ghost Festival in July, allows them a temporary return to the land of living, making their art and their stories visible once again.